Abstract
The history of societies is marked by ruptures such as wars, pandemics, new technologies and natural disasters. In response to such ruptures, societies generate social knowledge that enables the population to master the given rupture. The concept of social representations theorizes this production of social knowledge (Moscovici 1984). Social representations make the unfamiliar or uninvited rupture, familiar. For instance, social representations enable people to interact with intangible illnesses such as AIDS (Joffe 1995), they enable people to imagine a distant or unintelligible other (Jodelet 1989), they enable people to imagine what happens in the psychoanalyst’s office (Moscovici 1973), and they provide people with concrete images to guide thought and action in regard to genetically modified foods (Wagner et al. 2002). Emerging out of “the crisis in social psychology” and the critique of the individualization of social psychology (Moscovici 1973), the theory of social representations has provided a means for theorizing collective phenomena in their own right (Farr 1998). Hence, Moscovici’s well-known statement that social representations “lead a life of their own, circulate, merge, attract and repel each other and give birth to new representations, while old ones die out” (Moscovici 1984, p. 13). In this statement, the unit of social psychological analysis is the social representation, which appears as an autonomous, almost intentional, unit. Social psychological phenomena appear, in this statement, to happen between social representations rather than between people.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Bakhtin M (1981) The dialogic imagination: four essays. University of Texas Press, Austin
Bauer MW, Gaskell G (1999) Towards a paradigm for research on social representations. J Theory Soc Behav 29:163–186
Bloome D, Sheridan D, Street BV (1993) Reading mass-observation writing. University of Sussex Library, Brighton
Bruner J (1991) Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Calder A (1969) The people’s war. Britain 1939—1945. Panther, London
Catsiapis H (1996) La seconde guerre mondiale et les divertissements dramatiques. In: Gilbert B (Ed) World War II and dramatic entertainment (La société anglaise en guerre. Septembre 1939–Août 1945). Editions du Temps, Paris, pp. 53–74
Farr RM (1998) From collective to social representations: Aller et Retour. Cult Psychol 4:275–296
Flick U (1992) Triangulation revisited: strategy of validation or alternative. J Theory Soc Behav 22:175–197
Gilbert M (2001) Narrative identity. A reelaboration of Freud through Paul Ricoeur (L’identité narrative. Une reprise à partir de Freud de la pensée de Paul Ricoeur). Labor et Fides, Genève
Gillespie A (2005) Malcolm X and his autobiography: identity development and self-narration. Cult Psychol 11:77–88
Gillespie A (2007) Becoming other: from social interaction to self-reflection. InfoAge, Greenwich
Gillespie A, Cornish F, Aveling E-L, Zittoun T (2008) Conflicting community commitments: A dialogical analysis of a British woman’s kept during World War II diaries. J Community Psychol
Jodelet D (1989) Madness and social representations (Folies et représentations sociales). Presses universitaires de France, Paris
Joffe H (1995) Social representations of AIDS: towards encompassing issues of power. Pap Soc Represent 4:29–40. Retrieved February 28, 2006 from http://www.psr.jku.at/
Kelly M (2004) Helen Dunmore and the siege: great reading adventure 2005. Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, Bristol. Retrieved February 28, 2006 from http://www.bristolreads.com/downloads/britain_at_war.pdf
Marková I (2006) On the inner alter in dialogue. Int J Dial Sci 1:125–147
McAdams DP (2006) The redemptive self: stories Americans live by. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Moscovici S (1973) Psychoanalysis, its image, its audience (La psychanalyse, son image et son public). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris
Moscovici S (1984) The phenomenon of social representations. In: Farr RM, Moscovici S (Eds) Social representations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3–69
National Archive (2005) Women’s war work. Retrieved February 28, 2006 from http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
Perret-Clermont A-N, Zittoun T (2002) Sketch for a psychology of transitions (Esquisse d’une psychologie de la transition). Education permanente. Revue Suisse pour la Formation Continue 1:12–15
Richards J, Sheridan D (1987) Mass-observation at the movies. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Ricoeur P (1985) Time and narrative (Temps et récit), vol. 3. Points Essais, Edition du Seuil, Paris
Sheridan D, Street BV, Bloome D (2000) Writing ourselves mass-observation and literary practices. Hampton Press, Cresskill
Valsiner J (1998) The guided mind. A sociogenetic approach to personality. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Vygotsky LS (1962) Thought and language. MIT Press, Cambridge
Wagner W, Kronberger N, Seifert F (2002) Collective symbolic coping with new technology: knowledge, images and public discourse. Br J Soc Psychol 41:323–343
Washington F (1941) Baby mine (Dumbo Soundtrack). Retrieved February 28, 2006 from http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/dumbo.htm
Winnicott DW (1971) Playing and reality. Routledge, Philadelphia PA
Zittoun T (2006) Transitions. Development through symbolic resources. InfoAge, Greenwich
Zittoun T, Duveen G, Gillespie A, Ivinson G, Psaltis C (2003) The use of symbolic resources in developmental transitions. Cult Psychol 9:415–448
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zittoun, T., Gillespie, A., Cornish, F., Aveling, EL. (2008). Using Social Knowledge: A Case Study of a Diarist’s Meaning Making During World War II. In: Sugiman, T., Gergen, K.J., Wagner, W., Yamada, Y. (eds) Meaning in Action. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-74680-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-74680-5_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo
Print ISBN: 978-4-431-74679-9
Online ISBN: 978-4-431-74680-5
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)